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Community Corner

Po(o)litics: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How My 14 Summers at Torview Swim and Tennis Club Ended With "I Quit"

As I pulled out of Torview’s gravel driveway on a sun-filled Friday morning, childhood memories flashed through my mind: nearly cracking my teeth on frozen Twix bars, dancing the Cha Cha Slide with the lifeguards on kid’s night, breaking the girls fifteen and under freestyle relay record, and – between handfuls of Swedish Fish – playing sharks and minnows in the deep end until the sun fell behind the breezeway and our parents summoned us with open towels. I turned right onto Stormytown Road; I had just bellowed the words “I QUIT” for the first time in my life, and this is how it happened.

Disclaimer: this is in no way an attempt to bash any individual person or vent about a personal problem. In fact, this is far from a personal problem, as many other lifeguards and members have shared my concerns. I intend to both expose the inner workings of Torview for what they truly are and reminisce about the fundamental reasons I loved spending my summers there, reasons that I believe can be revived with proper leadership. Maybe it’s the lifeguard instincts kicking in, but my purpose in writing this piece is to help resuscitate the spirit of the pool club where I spent over a decade of summers. I’m twenty-one years old and a rising senior at Johns Hopkins University, and I have a lot of experience in the working world, including jobs at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Johns Hopkins as an Admissions Representative and Public Relations Student Worker, Baltimore City Paper as an editorial intern and HarperCollins Publishers as an editorial intern. I’m a hard worker, I’m outgoing, and I truly care about making real connections with my supervisors and colleagues alike. I have never had an issue with someone in a work setting before, and this is why I was presented with a challenge this summer.

In 2000, my family prayed to the gods of pool clubs that our membership application to Torview would be approved. Back then, membership was extremely competitive and required two letters of recommendation. The pool opened in 1956 as a result of the hard work of the Torbank Development, which, according to an excerpt from an essay by Richard Primps posted on Torview’s website, “was made up, for the most part, of World War II servicemen with their families” who lived in “an ideal area,” but with “no place to swim.” The people who started this club didn’t waste their time fighting amongst themselves or criticizing the staff, but rather worked together toward a simple goal: providing their members with a fun, safe place to swim. Luckily, we were accepted as members, and I spent many years at the club doing who-knows-what in the cool, blue abyss for hours on end. I worshipped the lifeguards, and I looked forward to becoming one. It seemed to be the best of both worlds: a fun summer job and a solid, weekly paycheck.

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However, as I started working in the snack bar and ascended the pool hierarchy to become a full-time lifeguard and swim lesson instructor, I began to notice the influence of the Board of Directors – otherwise known as “the Board.” The Board is comprised of seven members, and they make the rules, regulate membership, hire the staff – including the director – and act as the leaders and role models of the club. I had always heard about this central force of power, but I did not realize how divided the Board really was until I became an insider. It is no secret that any group of people in power will inevitably have some disagreements; however, over the years, I watched as these disagreements became full-throttled arguments that affected people’s personal lives and resulted in excommunications from the club. I like to think of it as “Po(o)litics,” as the Board tends to break into two factions – the younger members and the seasoned members – and, like the Democrats and Republicans, they waste their time fighting each other instead of working together to make the pool club the best it can be. Power is a scary, personality-changing concept, and when it gets to someone’s head, it can mask the reason he or she has that power in the first place. I worked for the Board of Directors – I was hired by them, and they told me when I wasn’t working hard enough or putting on a show of sweeping the deck, watering the flowers, scrubbing the bathroom floors, you name it. And I had no problem with these duties; sure, other lifeguards get to lounge out in the sun all day, but I didn’t mind hard work, as long as I was respected in return.

This year, a new Board was elected and a new director was hired. I had high hopes that things would change for the better, and, in a few ways, they did. Torview Palooza was a hit, and I had a great time in the guard chair listening to members share their musical talents. The Board offered us dinner a couple of times, which we gladly accepted, and it was nice to share the summer-barbecue-vibes with them, especially when potato salad was involved. Unfortunately, the vicious cycle proved true, and I once again found myself witnessing a divided board struggling to mediate legitimate concerns about the new director. As a former member, I winced when the director wore his shoes on the deck – one of Torview’s essential no-no’s – and I remained silent when some of the Board members breached another essential no-no, the “no food or drink except for water outside the snack bar” rule. Red cups full of twenty-one-plus liquids became ubiquitous outside of the snack bar on the weekends, and I felt it was not my place to tell a Board member he or she could not do so. That said, I was approached by the director when a non-Board member had a red cup while sitting on the edge of the pool saying that I had to tell the person to move if he did not move within the next few minutes. With all of these double standards, I didn’t know what to enforce. Every time I approached the director with a problem, he would say that it was not important. Needless to say, most of the issues I approached him with – including valid complaints from members – were never handled, and I found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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On the first staff meeting of the year, the director walked in and declared, “We’re off to a bad start.” It was then that I knew I was in for a challenge. After discussing what to do in an emergency when in the shallow end chair (a chair that is over four feet tall standing over three-and-a-half feet of water), I politely raised my hand and told the director that we are not allowed to jump off that chair, adding that we get down and then jump in, that this has been done in the past, and that the previous director had established it is unsafe to jump from this chair. The director told me that this was impossible (though I watched the guard get off the chair to make the save with my own eyes), and if I didn’t want to jump from the chair, I should find another job. Find another job? My heart rate spiked at this threat, and I held back a response – after all, I had fourteen years of experience there to his couple of days. That night, I contacted a Red Cross specialist, who told me that absolutely under no circumstances is it safe to jump off of that chair with its given height and the given water depth. The director e-mailed me later on, saying that he looked into the issue and thanked me for “alerting him to this potential hazard.” No apology, no “sorry we got off on the wrong foot”. I held my breath, and over the next few weeks, I did my best to get to know him. He was very unapproachable, and I felt belittled every time he spoke to me. So I had a bad boss – I told myself that everyone has at least one, that it would be a good learning experience. But, with a divided, disjointed Board that supported his antics, I began to feel like I was in a sort of boot camp, where my fellow lifeguards and I couldn’t do anything right.

One example that sticks out is the bathroom story. On a typical day, the rotation is as follows: fifteen minutes on the shallow chair, fifteen minutes on the deep chair, fifteen minutes on baby pool, fifteen minutes on desk, then repeat. We get one thirty-minute, unpaid break during our eight-and-a-half hour shift, and most of us are there even longer to teach private swim lessons or coach swim team. In the past, when we were on desk duty (flipping up members’ cards and greeting them as they come in), the previous director would step in to help out so that we could devour a snack in record time, spray on sunscreen or run to the bathroom before heading back onto the chair. On this day, I asked the director if he would please watch the desk while I went to the bathroom. He told me that I was “chained to the desk,” and that it is not his job to do my job. I remember laughing and asking him if I actually couldn’t use the bathroom. He told me that I should go to the bathroom before work, on my thirty-minute break, and after work. Again, I asked if he was kidding around, and when he told me that people in the corporate world don’t go to the bathroom, I realized he was serious. I have worked in the corporate world, and I can assure you that people do indeed use the bathroom, and multiple times a day at that. Though the director did finally let me to go to the bathroom, he gave me a lot of grief for it, and I felt guilty for something that no human being should feel a drop of guilt for.

I will forgo the countless other disputes I had with the director and the Board in order to focus on the catalyst of the downhill road toward my quitting: kid’s night. Before I start, I would like to establish that I love the kids at Torview, and I would never do anything to jeopardize their safety. Kid’s night took place on a Monday, and I told the director that I would work. I had my internship that day, so I packed my lifeguard attire into a tote bag and headed to the pool straight from New York City. My parents and brother were using all of the family’s cars, so my co-worker generously agreed to pick me up from the train station and drive me to kid’s night. My train was running two minutes late and, once I got off, traffic in Mt. Kisco was completely stopped. I did the responsible thing and called Torview, spoke with a guard, and told him to please tell the director we were running two minutes late. Keep in mind, I have never been late to Torview in my life, and, if they had to pay me for the times I was early, they would be bankrupt. We arrived at the club, and the director immediately told us to “sign in at 5:45.” I looked at the clock, and it was 5:33. I will not go into detail about the events that occurred between 5:33 and 6:00, when the kids arrived, but my co-worker and I were very frustrated. The director did not dock other lifeguards who were consistently fifteen minutes late, and I had heard him reprimand – but not take away pay – from guards who five to ten minutes late to their shifts. Regardless of how badly I wanted to walk out and leave on account of this unfair, biased treatment, I stayed so that the kids could have kid’s night. My mom, as a former member and a parent of a guard who was continuously being disrespected, came down to talk to the director, who refused to speak with her. Instead, she spoke with an unreceptive member of the Board, who did not want to deal with an upset parent and further accentuated how bad the relationship between staff and the management had become. I took the high road and did everything the director asked me to do that night, including cleaning the men’s bathroom by myself. He neither apologized to me nor made an effort to talk about the situation.

Three days later, at eleven at night, I received an e-mail from the director saying that I was off the schedule – no lifeguarding or private swim lessons at all – until I met with him. He asked that I meet him the following day, to which I replied that I could not make it, as I had work in the city. The director was unaccommodating, but I wanted to work the following weekend to make money, so I went out of my way to drive my brother to work, take the car, and then drive to Torview to meet with him before my shift. A Board member was there, too, and I was immediately suspicious. He sat me down, and, after telling me that no, I could not say something before he began, with his iPad in hand, the director read a prepared statement saying that I was suspended from working at Torview until August 18th (it was August 2nd). At first, I tried to reason that he had no grounds to suspend me. I asked him to explain, in list form, what I did to deserve a suspension. He told me that I acted unprofessionally on kid’s night by interrupting a staff meeting, which consisted of a couple of guards who weren’t staying for kid’s night, and threatening to leave and thus jeopardizing the safety of the pool (the kids were not there yet, and I never would have left the guard chair). Furious, I asked why I was being singled out, as the director had pushed other guards to the point of leaving before. He had no response for me, and I decided that I would not stand for said suspension. I yelled, “I QUIT,” and it felt really, really good. I told them that I would tell everyone what a disgrace the management at Torview Swim Club is, and here I am.

Am I bitter? Maybe a little. But the point of this piece is to hopefully reach the community and explain why I was virtually coerced into quitting after years of loyalty to the members. There is a double standard at this pool that induces a toxic, hypocritical environment. The pool has been smoke-free for a couple of years, yet on Torview Palooza, a family event, a group of members was smoking inside the gates. I noted this, as did other guards, and we brought it to the director’s attention. He did nothing about it, and when a group of eight-year-old girls approached me pinching their noses and asked if people are allowed to smoke inside Torview, I told him again, and he replied that there’s nothing he could do about it now. Moreover, I approached the director about a member of the Board who relentlessly deposited his cigarette butts into one of the covered trashcans, where the butts would bake in the hot sun all day. A guard would have to remove the lid after closing to change the liner, and the stench of cigarettes would rush out at the unfortunate employee – I notified the director about this, as well, and he simply did not want to bring it up to the Board member. A director is someone who has to deal with these uncomfortable situations, not hide from them. There was a span of time when the guards did not receive their weekly paychecks for over a month, and the director was unapproachable about this issue as well, stating that we would “get paid when we get paid.” The director blamed the Board, the Board blamed the director, and nobody was able to answer when we would be paid.

Don’t get me wrong – Torview is a great place to grow up. I had a wonderful childhood there, and I watched from the guard chair every day as the kids ran (despite our greatest efforts to tell them to walk) around the pool, smiles on their faces. I know that as a lifeguard, I was no longer a member, and the focus of the Board was accordingly not on pleasing me. However, there is a certain respect that I, and all other employees in all kinds of fields, expect, and it is really a shame when this respect is lost. I had to let a lot of my swim lesson kids’ parents know what happened, and I truly appreciate their kind words and support. The director and the Board could test my patience and threaten my job, but, at the end of the day, they could not deny the positive energy I brought with me to the pool, along with my whistle and towel, every time I walked through the rickety gates. I poured my heart and soul into this club, and I at least know that the members and kids respect me for it. While I will always cherish the memories I had at Torview, my respect for the leadership has melted away as fast as the Strawberry Eclairs I used to buy from the snack bar with the spare change I found on the bottom of my mom’s purse. At the end of the day, everyone – the director, the Board, the staff, the members – has to come together and remember that this place was built for families to have fun and cool off. I’ve already started a new lifeguarding job in a positive work environment, and I cannot wait to leave the po(o)litics in the past.  

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